Gender Comparison of Medical Student Microsurgical Skills in a Laboratory Model

Gender Comparison of Medical Student Microsurgical Skills in a Laboratory Model

Reply: Gender Comparison of Medical Student Microsurgical Skills in a Laboratory Model

It is with great appreciation that we consider the suggestions pointed out by the reader in our microsurgical training article among medical students.

Regarding the first comment, it is assumed that the medical students had no previous training in microsurgery but a questionnaire would have confirmed these assumptions and further given us an idea of the factors that could have affected their performance. All students were given the same amount of time to practice but only the performance after training was assessed. This testing at only one point in time does not indicate how male and female genders could learn skills differently. Further improvement in the research design could include a pre-test. Indeed, the correlation of certain nonsurgical skills (playing video games) in the performance of surgery should be considered.

The second comment regarding assessment done at only one time point by a single surgeon is pointed out in the article as one of the limitations of the study. It is further pointed out that the use of a video motion analysis software (ProAnalyst) could have made our study more objective but was limited by its high cost. We still believe that the data we have gathered in 13 years more or less give us a valid assessment of the surgical skills of our students that is similar for both genders.